WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter on Sunday night, sparing the younger Biden a possible conviction on felony firearms and tax charges and giving him special powers as president. The company withdrew its previous promise not to use the company for any purpose. of his family.
The Democratic president previously said he had no intention of pardoning or commuting his son’s sentence after he was convicted in two cases in Delaware and California. The move comes weeks before Hunter Biden is scheduled to be punished following his trial conviction in a gun case and guilty plea to tax charges, and ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s expected return to the White House. It took place within two months.
This ends years of legal wrangling for the younger Biden, who publicly revealed in December 2020 that he was under federal investigation, a month after his father won in 2020. This cast a shadow over the legacy of the elder Biden.
Biden repeatedly vowed to the American people after Trump’s first term in office to restore respect for norms and the rule of law, but ultimately used his position to help his son. , broke a promise to the American people not to do such a thing. .
In a statement released Sunday night, Biden said: “I believe in our justice system, but as I have wrestled with it, raw politics has infected this process and led to miscarriages of justice. I also believe that.”
The president’s sweeping pardon covers not only gun crimes and tax crimes against the younger Biden, but also crimes he committed or may have committed or participated in between January 1, 2014 and December 1, 2014. Other crimes against the United States are also targeted. , 2024.
In June, Biden flatly ruled out pardoning or commuting his son’s sentence, telling reporters during his son’s Delaware gun trial, “I will abide by the jury’s decision. I will, and I will not forgive him.”
On November 8, just days after President Trump’s victory, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dismissed the possibility of a pardon or pardon for the younger Biden, saying: Our answer is no. ”
Mr. Biden has publicly supported his only living son, even as Mr. Hunter fell into a serious drug addiction that threw his family life into turmoil, only to get back on track in recent years. The president’s political opponents have long used Hunter Biden’s myriad mistakes as a political cudgel against his father. At one hearing, lawmakers displayed a photo of the president’s drug-addicted son half-naked in a seedy hotel.
House Republicans are also seeking to impeach Biden’s father, who has long denied involvement in or profiting in any way from his son’s business dealings with the younger Biden over the years. He took advantage of the business and then tried to force it to give up.
“The charges in his case only arose after several of my political opponents in Congress attacked me and incited me to contest my election,” Biden said in a statement. “No reasonable person considering the facts of Hunter’s case could come to any other conclusion than that Hunter was chosen solely because he is my son.”
“I hope the American people understand why my father and president came to this decision,” Biden added, insisting he made the decision this weekend.
The president will spend the Thanksgiving holiday with Hunter and his family in Nantucket, Massachusetts, before departing for Angola late Sunday for what could be his last overseas trip as president before leaving office on January 20, 2025. I was planning to.
Hunter Biden was convicted in June of three felonies in Delaware federal court for purchasing a gun in 2018, but prosecutors said he did not use or be addicted to illegal drugs. He is said to have made false statements on federal documents.
He was scheduled to go to trial in September in a California case for failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes. But in a sudden move hours after jury selection began, he agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor and felony charges.
David Weiss, the Delaware attorney appointed by President Trump who negotiated the plea deal, was later appointed special prosecutor by Attorney General Merrick Garland to have greater autonomy in prosecuting the president’s son. It was done.
Hunter Biden said he pleaded guilty in the case to save his family further pain and embarrassment after sordid details about his struggle with crack cocaine addiction were revealed in a gun trial. Ta.
The tax charge carries a maximum sentence of 17 years in prison, and the gun charge carries a maximum sentence of 25 years, but federal sentencing guidelines are expected to call for much shorter terms, making it far less likely to serve a full sentence. It could have been avoided.
Hunter Biden was scheduled to be sentenced this month in two federal cases, but a special prosecutor was appointed after a plea deal with prosecutors that would have likely spared him a prison sentence fell apart under a judge’s scrutiny. It was a lawsuit brought by a government official. Under the original deal, Hunter was supposed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of tax evasion and avoid prosecution in the gun case if he stayed out of trouble for two years.
But the judicial review quickly collapsed last year after a judge raised concerns about unusual aspects of the deal. The younger Biden was later indicted in two cases.
Hunter Biden’s legal team released a 52-page white paper this weekend titled “The Political Prosecution of Hunter Biden,” calling the president’s son “both as a candidate in 2020 and as president thereafter.” “He was an agent who attacked and injured his father.”
Lawyers for the younger Biden have long argued that prosecutors bowed to political pressure to indict the president’s son, with Trump and other Republicans harshly criticizing the plea deal, which they called a “sweetheart” plea deal. .
Rep. James Comer, one of the Republicans leading the congressional investigation into the Biden family, slammed the president’s pardon, saying the evidence against Hunter was just the “tip of the iceberg.”
“It’s unfortunate that President Biden and his family, far from coming clean about decades of wrongdoing, continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability,” Comer said in a statement on Twitter, formerly known as Twitter. As stated on website X.
Biden is not the first president to use pardon power to benefit those close to him.
In his final weeks in office, President Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as several allies convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. President Trump announced over the weekend that he plans to appoint Kushner as the U.S. minister to France in the next administration.
President Trump, who has promised to overhaul the entire Justice Department and put supporters in place after he was indicted on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, announced in a social media post Sunday that Hunter Biden He said the pardon was “too terrible an abuse and a miscarriage.” of justice. ”
“Does the pardon Joe gave Hunter include the J-6 hostage who has now been imprisoned for years?” he asked, referring to those convicted in violent riots by his supporters.
In an emailed statement, Hunter Biden said he would never take the relief given to him for granted and vowed to dedicate his rebuilt life to “helping those still suffering from the disease.”
“I have acknowledged and taken responsibility for the mistakes I made during the darkest days of my addiction. Those mistakes were exploited in the political sport to publicly humiliate and humiliate me and my family.” said the younger Biden.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers filed motions in both Los Angeles and Delaware on Sunday night asking the judge overseeing his gun and tax case to immediately dismiss the pardon case.
A spokesperson for Weiss did not respond to a message seeking comment Sunday night.
NBC News first reported that Biden plans to pardon his son on Sunday.
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